By Emma Moriarty
“Well rounded” is a phrase that is often esteemed in our community. When you first hear this, it might make you think of liberal arts and what Tempe Prep wants its students to be. However, it is not always our first instinct to consider how the ones teaching us about these liberal arts are also widely educated.
For example, seasoned art teacher Mr. Savaglio has worked at a prestigious art gallery, been a principal at a charter school, been invited to present a paper at Oxford University, worked in real estate, and has taught economics at New School for the Arts. The fact that Tempe Prep teachers are qualified is well known. However, the extent of those qualifications is not often addressed.
“I started teaching in 1995,” says Mr. Savaglio. “I was working at a gallery, Riva Yares, in Scottsdale when the manager at the time recommended me to a friend of his who used to run Scottsdale Center for the Arts and was opening up a charter school, New School for the Arts, when he needed a visiting artist. It was supposed to last a month or two months so I started in August of 1995 on a two-month teaching contract to show my art and teach painting and drawing.
“They kept renewing my contract, and by the end of that school year I was a full-time art teacher. I wanted to create art projects and programs that were true ‘college prep’ programs. I wanted to include a lot of art history in what I was teaching and advanced techniques, projects, that typically high school students didn’t do.
When I started, visual arts was one of the smallest departments and now it is the largest. I fell in love with teaching right away because I was given the freedom to create … projects that were true college prep art projects. One hundred percent of my visual arts students got between a half-ride and a full-ride to any of the major arts colleges like NYU Tisch School of the Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, Cooper’s Union, Parsons, and a few more.”
Beyond his involvement in creating the curriculum and helping students with career goals, Mr. Savaglio also was invited by The Oxford Round Table to submit a paper on charter schools. He says The Oxford Round Table “accepted my paper for presentation and I presented it in front of a board of faculty. The title of my paper was ‘Truth in Advertising? The Need for Accountability in “Niche” Charters.’ Basically, my entire presentation was about how charter schools label themselves as x, y, or z type of school but then when the students arrive there they find substandard academics, substandard art classes, etc. In my paper, I used Tempe Prep as an example for ACT and SAT scores to make a point that if a school claims to be college preparatory, they need to have great academics, and if a school claims to be an arts school, they need to have a great fine arts program. I spent a week in Oxford living in the dorms, eating meals with professors. It was the experience of a lifetime.”
Mr. Savaglio wants to inspire a passion for art in each student. He explains, “The thing I love about teaching art is that a lot of students do not realize that there is an inner artist in every single one of them, a talented artist, and you just have to show them the light that helps them lose their insecurity of their ability in art. I try to figure out a way to have a balance between having joy in the artwork you produce and teaching you something new and trying to make you understand that you can create a viable piece of art that you can look back at years later and be proud of.”